Ken and Robin Consume Media: New Thomas Pynchon, Starfleet Academy, and Norwegian Noir
March 24th, 2026 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
Recommended
Death is a Caress (Film, Norway, Edith Carlmar, 1949) An assignation between a handsome, peevish mechanic (Clause Wiese) and an older, married rich woman (Bjørg Riiser-Larsen) enmeshes them in a tortured relationship. Domestic film noir recalls Fritz Lang in its use of visual symbolism and its social determinism.—RDL
Shadow Ticket (Fiction, Thomas Pynchon, 2025) Palooka detective in 1931 Milwaukee resists his agency’s determination to send him after the missing daughter of a fugitive cheese magnate. Absurdist prophecy of consolidating fascism starts as a Hammett riff and turns into an Ambler riff, with eliptonic fantasy elements creeping in at the edges.—RDL
Okay
An Expert in Murder and Nine Lessons (Fiction, Nicola Upson, 2008 and 2017) Two crime novels featuring mystery novelist Josephine Tey as (not as the detective, since no detection occurs in either) an interested bystander; the first and the seventh in the eleven-book (so far) series. Set in a kind of fanfic history, they compound “tell don’t show” with authorial intrusiveness. Nine Lessons does feature some cleverly gruesome takes on M.R. James stories as murder methods, though. Personal pet peeve: everyone in the books calls Josephine Tey “Josephine” when that was, of course, one of Elizabeth MacKintosh’s pseudonyms.—KH
Starfleet Academy Season 1 (Television, US, Paramount+, Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau, 2026) Quirky, centuries-old chancellor of the revived Starfleet Academy (Holly Hunter) attempts to make up for a past failure of empathy by strong-arming a rebellious buff genius (Sandro Rosita) into enrolling. Though not the weakest or most off-model Trek first season, with Paul Giamatti’s scenery-devouring recurring villain a particular highlight, the teen soap high concept meshes poorly with the franchise’s edict against ongoing conflict between core cast members.—RDL
